A Heroine of France: The Story of Joan of Arc Read online

  CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE MAID MARCHED FOR ORLEANS.

  Methinks the Maid loved that ancient sword better than all hershining armour of silver! Strange to say, the jewelled sheath ofthe King's Toledo blade fitted the weapon from Fierbois, and hesupplemented the priests' gift of a scabbard by this second richone. The Maid accepted it with graceful thanks; yet both thegorgeous cases were laid away, and a simple sheath of leather made;for the sword was to be carried at her side into battle, andneither white nor crimson velvet was suited to such a purpose.

  Nor would the Maid let us have her sword sharpened for her. Acurious look came upon her face as Bertrand pointed out thatalthough now clean and shining, its edges were too blunt for realuse. She looked round upon us as we stood before her, and passedher fingers lovingly down the edges of the weapon.

  "I will keep it as it is," she answered; "for though I must needscarry it into battle with me, I pray my Lord that it may never bemy duty to shed Christian blood. And if the English King will butlisten to the words of counsel which I have sent to him, perchanceit may even now be that bloodshed will be spared."

  In sooth, I believe that she would far rather have seen the enemydisperse of their own accord, than win the honour and glory of thecampaign, which she knew beforehand would bring to her renown, thelike of which no woman in the world's history has ever won. Shewould have gone back gladly, I truly believe, to her home inDomremy, and uttered no plaint, even though men ceased after theevent to give her the praise and glory; for herself she neverdesired such.

  But we, who knew the temper of the English, were well aware thatthis would never be. Even though they might by this time have heardsomewhat of the strange thing which had happened, and how theFrench were rallying round the standard of the Angelic Maid, yetwould they not readily believe that their crushed and beaten foeswould have power to stand against them. More ready would they be toscoff than to fear.

  Now, at last, after all these many hindrances and delays, all wasin readiness for the start. April had well nigh run its course, andnature was looking her gayest and loveliest when the day came thatwe marched forth out of the Castle of Chinon, a gallant littlearmy, with the Maid in her shining white armour and her flutteringwhite pennon at our head, and took the road to Tours, where thegreat and redoubtable La Hire was to meet us, and where we were tofind a great band of recruits and soldiers, all eager now to be ledagainst the foe.

  Much did we wonder how the Generals of the French army wouldreceive the Maid, set, in a sense, over them as Commander-in-Chiefof this expedition, with a mandate from the King that she was to beobeyed, and that her counsels and directions were to be followed.We heard conflicting rumours on this score. There were those whodeclared that so desperate was the condition of the city, and sodisheartened the garrison and citizens that they welcomed with joythe thought of this deliverer, and believed already that she wassent of God for their succour and salvation. Others, on thecontrary, averred that the officers of the army laughed to scornthe thought of being aided or led by a woman--a peasant--uneperonelle de bas lieu, as they scornfully called her--and that theywould never permit themselves to be led or guided by one who couldhave no knowledge of war, even though she might be able to read thesecrets of the future.

  In spite of what had been now ruled by the Church concerning her,there were always those, both in the French and English camps, whocalled her a witch; and we, who heard so many flying rumours,wondered greatly what view the redoubtable La Hire took of thismatter, and Dunois, the Bastard of Orleans, as he was often called.For these two men, with Xaintrailles, were the ruling Generals inOrleans, and their voice would be paramount with the army there,and would carry much weight with those reinforcements for therelieving force which we were to find awaiting us at Tours and atBlois.

  Now La Hire, as all men know, was a man of great renown, and ofimmense personal weight and influence. He was a giant in stature,with a voice like a trumpet, and thews of steel; a mighty man inbattle, a daring leader, yet cautious and sagacious withal; a manfeared and beloved by those whom he led in warfare; a gay roystererat other times, with as many strange oaths upon his lips as thereare saints in the calendar; what the English call a swashbucklerand daredevil; a man whom one would little look to be led or guidedby a woman, for he was impatient of counsel, and headstrong alikein thought and action.

  And this was the man who was to meet us at Tours, form hisimpression of the Maid, and throw the great weight of his personalinfluence either into one scale or the other. Truth to tell, I wassomething nervous of this ordeal, and there were many who shared mydoubts and fears. But the Maid rode onward, serene and calm, thelight of joy and hope in her eyes, untroubled by any doubts. Atlast she was on her way to the relief of the beleaguered city;there was no room for misgiving in her faithful heart.

  We entered Tours amid the clashing of joy bells, the plaudits ofthe soldiers, and the laughter, the weeping, the blessings of anexcited populace, who regarded the Maid as the saviour of therealm. They crowded to their windows and waved flags and kerchiefs.They thronged upon her in the streets to gaze at her fair face andgreet her as a deliverer.

  It was indeed a moving scene; but she rode through it, calm andtranquil, pausing in the press to speak a few words of thanks andgreeting, but preserving always her gentle maidenly air of dignityand reserve. And so we came to the house which had been set apartfor her use on her stay, and there we saw, standing at the foot ofthe steps which led from the courtyard into the house, a mighty,mailed figure, the headpiece alone lacking of his full armour, acarven warrior, as it seemed, with folded arms and bent brows,gazing upon us as we filed in under the archway, but making no moveto approach us.

  I did not need the whisper which ran through the ranks of ourescort to know that this man was the great and valiant La Hire.

  As the Maid's charger paused at the foot of the steps, this manstrode forward with his hand upraised as in a salute, and givingher his arm, he assisted her to alight, and for a few moments thetwo stood looking into each other's eyes with mutual recognition,taking, as it were, each the measure of the other.

  The Maid was the first to speak, her eyes lighting with that deepdown, indescribable smile, which she kept for her friends alone.When I saw that smile in her eyes, as they were upraised to LaHire's face, all my fears vanished in a moment.

  "You are the Dauphin's brave General La Hire, from Orleans," shesaid; "I thank you, monsieur, for your courtesy in coming thus tomeet me. For so can we take counsel together how best the enemiesof our country may be overthrown."

  "You are the Maid, sent of God and the King for the deliverance ofthe realm," answered La Hire, as he lifted her hand to his lips, "Ibid you welcome in the name of Orleans, its soldiers, and itscitizens. For we have been like men beneath a spell--a spell toostrong for us to break. You come to snap the spell, to break theyoke, and therefore I bid you great welcome on the part of myselfand the citizens and soldiers of Orleans. Without your counsels toHis Majesty, and the aid you have persuaded him to send, the citymust assuredly have fallen ere this. Only the knowledge that helpwas surely coming has kept us from surrender."

  "I would the help had come sooner, my General," spoke the Maid;"but soon or late it is one with my Lord, who will give us thepromised victory."

  From that moment friendship, warm and true, was established betwixtthe bronzed warrior and the gentle Maid, who took up, as by naturalright, her position of equal--indeed, of superior--in command, notwith any haughty assumption, not with any arrogant words or looks,but sweetly and simply, as though there were no question but thatthe place was hers; that to her belonged the ordering of theforces, the overlooking of all. Again and again, even we, who hadcome to believe so truly in her divine commission, were astonishedat the insight she showed, the sagacity of her counsels, thewonderful authority she was able to exert over the soldiers broughttogether, a rude, untrained, insubordinate mass of men, collectedfrom all ranks and classes of the people, some being little betterthan bands of marauders, living o
n prey and plunder, since ofregular fighting there had been little of late; others, mercenarieshired by the nobles to swell their own retinues; many raw recruits,fired by ardour at the thought of the promised deliverance; a fewregular trained bands, with their own officers in command, butforming altogether a heterogeneous company, by no means easy todrill into order, and swelled by another contingent at Blois, ofvery much the same material.

  But the Maid assembled the army together, and thus addressed them.At least, this was the substance of her words; nothing canreproduce the wonderful earnestness and power of her voice andlook, for her face kindled as she spoke, and the sunshine playingupon her as she sat her charger in the glory of her silver armour,seemed to encompass her with a pure white light, so that men's eyeswere dazzled as they looked upon her, and they whispered one to theother:

  "The Angelic Maid! The Angelic Maid! surely it is an Angel of Godcome straight down from Heaven to aid and lead us."

  "My friends," she spoke, and her voice carried easily to everycorner of the great square, packed with a human mass, motionless,hanging upon her words; "My friends, we are about to start forthupon a crusade as holy as it is possible for men to be concernedin, for it is as saviours and deliverers of your brethren and ourcountry that we go; and the Lord of Hosts is with us. He has biddenus march, and He has promised to go with us, even as He was withthe Israelites of old. And if we do not see His presence in pillarof cloud by day, and pillar of fire by night, we yet do know andfeel Him near us; and He will give abundant proof that He fightsupon our side!"

  She lifted her face for a moment to the sky. She was bareheaded,and every head was bared in that vast crowd as she uttered the nameof the Most High. It seemed as though a light from Heaven fell uponher as she spoke, and a deep murmur ran through the throng. It wasas if they answered that they needed no other vision than that ofthe Maid herself.

  "If then the Lord be with us, must we not show ourselves worthy ofHis holy presence in our midst? O my friends, since I have beenwith you these few days, my heart has been pained and grieved bythat which I have heard and seen. Oaths and blasphemies fall fromyour lips, and you scarce know it yourselves. Drunkenness and viceprevail. O my friends, let this no longer be amongst us! Let uscleanse ourselves from all impurities; let our conversation be yea,yea, nay, nay. Let none take the name of the Lord in vain, nor soilHis holy cause by vice and uncleanness. O let us all, day by day,as the sun rises anew each morning, assemble to hear Mass, and toreceive the Holy Sacrament. Let every man make his confession. Holypriests are with us to hear all, and to give absolution. Let usstart forth upon the morrow purified and blessed of God, and let usday by day renew that holy cleansing and blessing, that the Lordmay indeed be with us and rest amongst us, and that His heart benot grieved and burdened by that which He shall see and hearamongst those to whom He has promised His help and blessing!"

  Thus she spoke; and a deep silence fell upon all, in the which itseemed to me the fall of a pin might have been heard. The Maid satquite still for a moment, her own head bent as though in prayer.Then she lifted it, and a radiant smile passed over her face, asmile as of assurance and thankful joy. She raised her hand andwaved it, almost as though she blessed, whilst she greeted hersoldiers, and then she turned her horse, the crowd making way forher in deep reverential silence, and rode towards her own lodging,where she remained shut up in her own room for the rest of the day.

  But upon the following morning a strange thing had happened. Everysingle camp follower--all the women and all the disorderly rabblethat hangs upon the march of an army--had disappeared. They hadslunk off in the night, and were utterly gone. The soldiers weregathered in the churches to hear Mass. All that could do soattended where it was known the Maid would be, and when she hadreceived the Sacrament herself, hundreds crowded to do the like;and I suppose there were thousands in the city that day, who,having confessed and received absolution, received the pledge ofthe Lord's death, though perhaps some of them had not thought ofsuch a duty for years and years.

  And here I may say that this was not an act for once and all. Dayby day in the camp Mass was celebrated, and the Holy Sacramentgiven to all who asked and came. The Maid ever sought to begin theday thus, and we of her personal household generally followed herexample. Even La Hire would come and kneel beside her, a littlebehind, though it was some while before he desired to partake ofthe Sacrament himself. But to be near her in this act of devotionseemed to give him joy and confidence and for her sake, because hesaw it pained her, he sought to break off his habit of profaneswearing, and the use of those strange oaths before which men hadbeen wont to quake.

  And she, seeing how sorely tried he was to keep from his accustomedhabit, did come to his aid with one of her frank and almostboy-like smiles, and told him that he might swear by his baton ifhe needs must use some expletive; but that no holy name mustlightly pass his lips.

  Strange indeed was it to see the friendship which had so quicklysprung up between that rough warrior and the Maid, whom he couldalmost have crushed to death between his mighty hands.

  If all the Generals in the army were as noble minded as he, and asready to receive her whom God had sent them, we should have littleto fear; but there was Dunois yet to reckon with, who had promisedto come forth and meet her outside the town (for the blockade, as Ihave before said, was not perfect; and on the south side men couldstill come and go with caution and care), and to lead her intriumph within its walls, if the English showed not too greatresistance.

  But even now we were to find how that they did not yet trust theMaid's authority as it should be trusted; and even La Hire was infault here, as afterwards he freely owned. For the Maid had toldthem to lead her to the city on the north side, as her plan was tostrike straight through the English lines, and scatter thebesieging force ere ever she entered the town at all. But since thecity lies to the north of the river, and the English had builtaround it twelve great bastilles, as they called them, and lay inall their strength on this side, it seemed too venturesome toattack in such a manner; and in this La Hire and Dunois were bothagreed. But La Hire did not tell the Maid of any disagreements, butknowing the country to be strange to her, he led her and the armyby a route which she believed the right one, till suddenly we beheldthe towers of Orleans and the great surrounding fortificationsrising up before our eyes; and, behold! the wide river with itsbridge more than half destroyed, lay between us and our goal!

  At this sight the eyes of the Maid flashed fire, and she turnedthem upon La Hire, but spoke never a word. His face flushed a dullcrimson with a sudden, unexpected shame. To do him justice be itsaid, that (as we later heard) he had been against this deceptionafter having seen the Maid; but there were now many notablegenerals and marshals and officers with the army, all of whom wereresolved upon this course of action, which had been agreed uponbeforehand with Dunois, and they had overborne his objections,which were something faint-hearted perhaps, for with his love andadmiration for the Maid, he trembled, as he now explained to her,to lead her by so perilous a route, and declared that she couldwell be conducted into the city through the Burgundy gate, bywater, without striking a blow, instead of having to fight her wayin past the English bastions.

  "I thank you for your care for me, my friend," she answered, "butit were better to have obeyed my voice. The English arrows couldnot have touched me. We should have entered unopposed. Now muchprecious time must needs be lost, for how can this great army betransported across yonder river?--and the bridge, even if we coulddislodge the English from the tower of Les Tourelles, is brokendown and useless."

  Indeed it seemed plain to all that the Generals had made a greatblunder; for though we marched on to Checy, where Dunois met us,and whence some of the provisions brought for the starving citycould be dispatched in the boats assembled there, it was plain thatthere was no transport sufficient for the bulk of the army; and theMaid, as she and Dunois stood face to face, at last regarded himwith a look of grave and searching scrutiny.

  "Are you he whom m
en call the Bastard of Orleans?"

  "Lady, I am; and I come to welcome you with gladness, for we aresore beset by our foes; yet all within the city are taking heart ofgrace, believing that a Deliverer from Heaven has been sent tothem."

  "They think well," answered the Maid, "and right glad am I to come.But wherefore have I been led hither by this bank, instead of theone upon which Talbot and his English lie?"

  "Lady, the wisest of our leaders held that this would be the safestway."

  "The counsel of God and our Lord is more sure and more powerfulthan that of generals and soldiers," she answered gravely. "Youhave made an error in this. See to it that such error be notrepeated. I will that in all things my Lord be obeyed."

  The Generals stood dumb and discomfited before her; a thrill ranthrough the army when her words were repeated there; but, indeed,we all quickly saw the wisdom of her counsel and the folly of heradversaries; for the bulk of the army had perforce to march back toBlois to cross the river there, whilst only a thousand picked menwith the chiefest of the Generals and the convoys of provisionsprepared to enter the city by water and pass through the BurgundyGate.

  At the first it seemed as though even this would be a dangeroustask, for the wind blew hard in a contrary direction, and thedeeply-laden boats began to be in peril of foundering. But as westood watching them from the bank, and saw their jeopardy, and somewere for recalling them and waiting, the Maid's voice suddenly rangforth in command:

  "Leave them alone, and hasten forward with the others. The windwill change, and a favouring breeze shall carry us all safe intothe city. The English shall not fire a shot to hinder us, for thefear of the Maid has fallen upon them!"

  We gazed at her in wonder as she stood a little apart, her facefull of power and calm certainty. And indeed, it was but a very fewminutes later that the wind dropped to a dead calm, and a light airsprang up from a contrary direction, and the laden boats gladlyspreading sail, floated quietly onwards with their precious loadtowards the suffering city.

  Then we embarked, somewhat silently, for the awe which fell uponthose who had never seen the Maid before, extended even to us.Moreover, with those frowning towers of the English so close uponus, crowded with soldiers who seemed to know what was happening,and who were coming into Orleans, it was scarce possible not tolook for resistance and hostile attack.

  But curious as it may seem, not a shot was fired as we passedalong. A silence strange and sinister seemed to hang over the linesof the enemy; but when we reached the city how all was changed!

  It was about eight o'clock in the evening when at last we finishedour journey by water and land, and entered the devoted town. Therethe chiefest citizens came hurrying to meet us, leading a whitecharger for their Deliverer to ride upon.

  And when she was mounted, the people thronged about her weeping andshouting, blessing and hailing her as their champion and saviour.The streets were thronged with pale-faced men; women and childrenhung from the windows, showering flowers at our feet. Torches litup the darkening scene, and shone from the breastplates andheadpieces of the mailed men. But the Maid in her white armourseemed like a being from another sphere; and the cry of "St.Michael! St. Michael himself!" resounded on all sides, and one didnot wonder.

  Nothing would serve the Maid but to go straight to the Cathedralfirst, and offer thanksgiving for her arrival here, and the peopleflocked with her, till the great building was filled to overflowingwith her retinue of soldiers and her self-constituted followers.Some begged of her to address them from the steps at the conclusionof the brief service, but she shook her head.

  "I have no words for them--only I love them all," she answered,with a little natural quiver of emotion in her voice. "Tell themso, and that I have come to save them. And then let me go home."

  So La Hire stood forth and gave the Maid's message in his trumpettones, and the Maid was escorted by the whole of the joyful andloving crowd to the house of the Treasurer Boucher, where were herquarters, and where she was received with acclamation and joy. Andthus the Maid entered the beleaguered city of Orleans.